


Ends

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boston, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 15:05:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7057369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Friday night, in Boston, in January.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ends

“I seriously thought that was never going to end,” Mary said. She and Emma and Aurelia were in the women’s locker room which was in the hospital’s basement; the décor was early cement block and 70’s orange stripes. The fluorescent lighting was guaranteed to make you look as if you were working an old-school 40 hour shift, despite the changes in the work-hours regulations. Mary had found it was best to use the mirrors for a vague approximation of her appearance and save any actual make-up adjustments for her car. The mirrors were wavy enough she couldn’t even get a ponytail straight and that was saying something.

“What? The shift?” Emma asked. She was rummaging through her Vera Bradley pink ribbon patterned duffel bag where she had a change of clothes, toiletry kit and a micro Whole Foods of vitamins. She had been very taken with the one nutrition class they had and was on a kind of weird Dr. Oz kick now but she was the best friend and co-resident Mary could have in every other way, so she just tried to ignore the offers of raspberry leaf concentrate or pomegranate capsules.

“The rotation? It pretty much sucked except for Dr. Gibson. I think I want to be her when I grow up,” Aurelia offered. She was a speed demon on the wards and everywhere else and had managed to get in a quick shower while Mary and Emma had done god knows what, checking their phones or trying to find a ponytail holder or chapstick. Now she was actually getting dressed in real clothes she was going to wear out to a real club since “my brother Gabe is in town, so we are going salsa dancing and then everyone will be confused all night that he is my brother. He makes an awesome wingman too.” Aurelia had sort of sworn of men, or at least other doctors, since she and Samuel hadn’t been able to make it work. Mary suspected that the relationship had foundered largely due to sleep deprivation. She felt like it was salvageable; they had been really good together but it wasn’t up to her. Aurelia had made some noise about wanting to work overseas and not wanting to be tied down and Samuel was deeply and obviously attached to his large family in Philly and had made it clear he would look for a job there when they graduated.

“Well, actually both of those but I was mostly thinking of that end of rotation ceremony they had. It’s not required, so I don’t know why they keep doing it if Summers is just going to stand there and stare or tell me how much I remind him of Madeline and the bad hat. Getting carded is fine but getting compared to a children’s book character when you are 28 years old is beyond infantilizing. And he never does it to guys. And, if you are having a ceremony, don’t just bring the half-empty Dunkin coffee boxes from the attendings’ lounge and whatever pastries you can scrounge up from Au Bon Pain when they go half-price,” Mary said. She knew she was ranting but she also knew that neither Emma nor Aurelia would call her on it. They had both had their share of crappy subtle or not-so-subtle misogyny during residency and they were also both primarily focused on doing something else. Emma was texting alternately furiously and pensively and Aurelia was doing complicated eye make-up things that would probably give Mary a cornea injury. She was already dressed in an outfit Mary couldn’t pull off even in her best dreams and despite the half-frozen evil grey slush on every sidewalk, she was wearing a pair of open-toed heels. 

“So, it’s agreed—this was one shitty rotation but we’re done with it. The End. Never again will we have to worry about walking in on Anne and Byron in a supply closet in flagrante, that was so gross, or trying to pretend that he is not wearing her scrub top afterwards. No more sketchy Frank lurking around the elevators at 2 am. And no one will ever have to smell Jimmy’s homemade pate again. I swear that was cat food,” Emma said, a little half-smile on her face which Mary though had more to do with her phone’s insistent little pings and less the list of horrors they had finally escaped.

“Yeah, I thought Mary was going to actually vomit that one time when Jimmy said it was a rabbit terrine,” Aurelia remarked. Mary tried to turn her mind away from the rabbit terrine incident, shortly after which she had hurriedly found a mauve emesis basin and rid herself of her own unremarkable breakfast; instead, she focused on the nearly hypnotic grace of Aurelia applying lipstick the color of a Bing cherry. As with most activities Aurelia undertook, it was accomplished efficiently and elegantly. Mary had been relieved to share the call room with Aurelia and find that she actually could be clumsy, could fumble her way to and from the top bunk, and cursed in fluent Portugese when she banged an elbow. It had taken a shockingly bad call and a head cold to push her over the edge, but it was a relief all the same.

“Ok, I’m gonna go now. Gabe is waiting for me in the front circle,” Aurelia said as she slung her capacious shoulder bag over one arm and dumped her scrubs in the laundry bin on the way out. “We still on for yoga on Sunday?”

“Of course. Unless the forecast is right for once and we get that storm. Then I’m lying on the couch watching House Hunters episodes until my eyeballs fall out,” Mary replied. Aurelia blew a kiss from the door and was gone. Mary turned back towards Emma who was dressing in a much more chic manner than Mary would expect for someone who was planning to go home and watch Amelie again.

“Did he write back?” The ‘he’ in question was Henry Hopkins, a darkly handsome and unexpectedly nice family medicine resident who had spent three weeks with them on the rotation. He was too polite to make a move but the looks he gave Emma’s butt and the subsequent oblique questions he’d asked Mary about Emma’s relationship status put paid to the concern that he was gay. Emma had learned the hard way not to date a new guy on the same rotation; they called this the George Henderson Principle and she had not violated it since their internship. Mary, who’d arrived in residency already married, had not had to test it again but she had seen the wisdom of it after a disastrous radiology rotation during her third year of med school, during which she questioned whether she should have stuck with her childhood plan of diplomat at the UN or astrophysicist, while hiding behind stacks of lead-lined aprons from the hot pursuit of P. Allan Squivers. Henry had been off the rotation for a few weeks now and was back in the friendly little community hospital he spent most of his time in but Emma had been firm and had refused to do much besides send the most basic smiley-face emojis until today. 

“Yes. I thought it would just be coffee but he’s meeting me at Firenze for dinner. Does this look okay?” Emma asked. Mary rolled her eyes a little. Emma managed to look okay, well, sort of Camille on the fainting couch but still, after the stomach flu or the day they ran three codes back to back. So, tonight, she was flat-out beautiful in a burgundy cashmere turtleneck and a pair of black jeans that looked painted on. Henry had mostly seen Emma in scrubs, so she was bound to make his eyes bug out. A pair of large gold hoops swung from Emma’s ears when she shook her hair back.

“You should definitely do that a lot, the hair-flippy thing, he’s going to die. And it’s so nice you haven’t started GI yet, you don’t have to wear your pager,” Mary pointed out. Nothing like a clunky alpha-numeric pager to ruin the line of a pair of tight jeans. “You have to call me after and tell me how it went, don’t just text me.”

“Yes, of course. You guys have any big plans?” Emma replied, reassembling the duffel bag and shoving it unmercifully into a locker. She had a smaller black leather tote to complete her magazine cover look. Mary really only looked at magazines at the dentist, so she couldn’t be more specific about which one—Glamour? Cosmo? She thought Emma looked a little too normal for Vogue.

“Um, no. We’re catching up on laundry mostly and we have all sorts of boring things that have been put off too long to deal with. Lisette emailed me that recipe she made though, so maybe I’ll try that,” Mary said.

“She was the only good part of this rotation besides Dr. G and being with you and Aurelia,” Emma said. “I’m going to miss her.”

“Yeah, a good unit secretary is the key to happiness,” Mary agreed. “Don’t you need to get out of here already? I bet your Uber is already waiting for you, isn’t it?”

Emma just smiled then as she grabbed her bag and ran out the door, making a jokey little I’ll-call-you sign that made more sense when people had handsets. Mary finished cleaning up as best she could; she hadn’t brought a spare set of clothes so she was forced to wear her scrubs home but at least she could layer the top with a fleece under her parka. She’d had some fantasy a thousand years ago this morning about dropping off some boxes at Fedex on the way home but now all she wanted was her apartment, a cup of tea and Jed.

She got all three but it took longer than she expected. Digging out her car from the 2 inches of snow that had fallen since she parked it so many hours ago would have been a pain anyway, but she spent about 15 minutes trying to open the Subaru two spots over which wasn’t hers. She was too tired to tell the difference. During that quarter-hour, the slush managed to creep up her scrub pants and into her sneakers since she hadn’t thought to wear her Keens to work, so she drove home with the wet cheap cotton slapping against her calves. Finding a parking space by the apartment was no treat either.

When she walked in, the apartment smelled of nothing in particular. It was clean though, very clean as if Jed had decided to focus entirely on that instead of catching up on the New Yorker or watching the fishing shows she could only tolerate and never enjoy. The counters were neat though she saw her teapot snuggled in its Aran cozy and two mugs beside it. Every chair had its cushion plumped and standing at attention and the cyclamen in the window seemed like it was working its way to a new flower. She just stood there for a minute, looking around, starting to regain feeling in her feet while the lamplight collected in the curtains Jed had pulled closed against the night.

“Hey, sweetheart, you’re home,” Jed called out as he walked from their bedroom. He’d been home for a while judging by the state of the apartment and his clothes; he was in his preferred Yale sweats and a loose plaid flannel shirt he refused to surrender to the 90s. He smelled a little sweet from a recent shower, but mostly just of clean, lovely man. She had dropped her backpack by the door but she stood somewhat limply by the small kitchen island and was taken aback when her eyes filled with tears.

“Mary, what’s wrong?” he asked, walking over to her and taking her gently in his arms. “Your scrubs are all wet, your feet must be cold, but that’s not all it is, right?”

“Isn’t there any dinner?” she said between sniffs, her voice somewhat more plaintive than whiney, but it was close.

“Of course there is, I just was afraid the smell might bother you and I wasn’t sure what you wanted. There’s lasagna and I got that noodle soup you like or I can make you scrambled eggs,” he said into her hair. He was warm and she heard in his voice he was only laughing at her a little bit.

“Lasagna. Please.” She felt dull and slow now, the day catching up with her. The end of rotation ceremony seemed to belong to another life.

“I think you need to take a shower and get into your pajamas. I’ll get dinner ready and we can even eat on the couch. You wanted to watch Howards End the other day, still up for that?” he said, nudging her toward the bathroom, equally clean but with the faint citrus scent of the French soap she indulged in as long as she could get free shipping. She felt nearly entirely human again after the shower and drying her hair. She pulled her sprigged flannel nightgown on. She remembered the first time she’d worn it with Jed and he’d chuckled and asked where her bunny slippers were. They’d been together a few months then after she’d first brushed him off at a med school mixer shortly after he’d split up with Eliza; the demise of his first marriage had coincided with his surgery rotation and he seemed drunk with it, even though he was sober at the party. 

The divorce, his 6 years clean, her own European hostel jumping with Gustav for the year before med school were topics they ended up talking about in the library when he came to apologize for his lame pass with real French roast coffee and a big oatmeal cookie to share. She’d barely been aware of him before the party since he was out of sync with her from his PhD research but it made it easier to overcome the poor first impression. The therapy he went to for a few months also helped even though she was sometimes taken aback by the incisive degree of insight he’d achieved regarding not only himself, but also, seemingly everyone around him. This naturally included her. She sometimes wondered if he’d missed his calling picking neurology over psychiatry. He’d pointed out that patients reacting to him in his tweed jacket and wool sweater the way she did would not be an appropriate use of the analytic couch. She had tried to come up with a witty rejoinder about transference and projection but he was too good with his hands, his soft mouth. She had ended up urging him toward her with her own hands and thighs, locking her ankles over his calves; she could feel his smile against her skin everywhere he touched.

Jed settled behind her on the ordinary corduroy couch they’d bought at Macy’s on sale after they’d eaten side-by-side with an alarming alacrity every intern absorbed osmotically within the first 6 weeks of training. He’d placed a Camelback full of water on the coffee table next to a cup of decaffeinated green tea and a little plate of shortbread she knew she would want in about 20 minutes. He had one hand warm on her hip and used the other to flick the remote enough times to get the movie going. It was all grey and gold and she knew Helena Bonham Carter would soon fill the screen with her ivory pouting face under her nesty pompadour. Jed’s hand migrated to her belly and was even warmer there.

“Are you going to tell Emma now?” he asked, his voice starting behind her but drifting around her, moving through her back, the resonance a great pleasure. She’d found the lemon he’d decorated with a Sharpie in an egg cup she hadn’t known they owned; he’d made a funny little face and had even attached a little speech bubble out of some paper to say “Hi, Mommy!” and she knew he’d been on Babycenter again. She’d decided to tell Emma at the end of the first trimester this time. He’d only said, “Are you sure?” and then nodded when she announced it but she couldn’t face disappointing anyone other than herself and Jed if she had another miscarriage. 

She hadn’t been blasé for the first pregnancy, but she hadn’t worried that much. When she lost it, she’d cried for a weekend then tried to buck herself up with statistics. The second had been an ectopic and had been much scarier. Jed had run from the floors to meet her in the ER and she had never seen him look so frightened while he tried to look so calm. His eyes had been very dark above his white coat but she didn’t remember much more because she’d been hemorrhaging. They’d been able to save the ovary and the tube but the emotional aftermath had been harder for both of them. She still sometimes woke up to find him watching her, a hand raised as if he wanted to touch her face but he’d confessed “I just wanted to feel your heart beat.” This was the third time and she’d only told her sister Caroline, who’d also had a miscarriage, but who lived in Chicago with her husband and two boys. Caroline offered lots of support but nearly all of it was through phone calls and texts. Mary felt like she could handle it better if she had bad news to share. Emma had been so nurturing and kind through all of it but Mary could feel her reflected sadness and it was something she felt like she couldn’t take on this time if she lost the pregnancy again.

But it didn’t seem like there would be bad news this time which was why Jed was cartooning on produce they didn’t end up eating or even composting. The results of the nuchal scan had come in earlier this week and were completely fine though she’d cried on the phone when she’d been put on hold for the 4th time. She was in the call room, the only place she could find during the day with a degree of privacy. The OB’s office had called just at 4:30 the day before, which meant she couldn’t get a hold of anyone until the next day and Jed had spent the whole night talking her down from increasingly elaborate worries about genetic abnormalities. He had already hiddden his copy of Smith’s “Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformations” during her second pregnancy. The nurse had apologized for scaring her with the wait but told her she was just a little anemic, eveything else was fine and did she want to know the baby’s sex? They hadn’t decided that yet so she put it off and figured they could always find out at the next appointment. She’d actually text-paged Jed the results, knowing it would be the one way he would definitely get the information quickly at work. He’d texted back, _I love you Mary_ , only that and she didn’t delete it.

“I thought after her big date with Henry, that family medicine guy, we would have a heart-to-heart. She might have guessed though—I’ve been wearing scrubs a lot and she keeps offering me milk, although there was just that article about full-fat dairy so maybe not,” she said. His flannel shirt rubbed against her cheek when she turned to watch the screen. She suspected she would not make it through the movie and it would be around 10:30 when she woke up. Jed’s hands would both be on her belly, low, right above the waist of her bikini briefs where she had begun to get round and some sort of WWII documentary would be on. Howards End would have been deeded to Margaret Schlegel and it would have become the perfect end to Mary’s day when she covered Jed’s bigger hand with her own and their wedding rings clinked against each other. She would not even bother to check her phone again before bed and the text Emma had promised not to send would remain unread until the next morning **M, I really like him.**

**Author's Note:**

> So, this response to the "end" prompt came later but not never and I tried to work in as many endings as I possibly could as well as a whole bunch of our Mercy Street people. Off-screen, I imagine Matron Brannan is the head of nursing and Emma's parents are working on having a wing named after them. The less said about Bullen, the better :)


End file.
